


Winter's Breath

by Jackie Thomas (Jackie_Thomas)



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Episode: s04e01 The Dead of Winter, M/M, Non-explicit reference to past child abuse, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 14:36:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1691843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackie_Thomas/pseuds/Jackie%20Thomas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had hoped he might get through the Crevecoeur case with his dignity intact.  Post-episode for Dead of Winter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter's Breath

SOCO have been excavating the remains under the statue since first light. There had been a fountain there when James was a child; the repository of pennies and all household wishes, now null and void. He watches the Forensic team work until Hooper suggests he bugger off and find some coffee because he’s looking worse than the corpse.

He had hoped he might get through the Crevecoeur case with his dignity intact if not his professional reputation. He does just about keep it together; scarcely flinching when shot even though it bloody hurt, still bloody hurts actually. If Lewis hadn’t suddenly started being so nice to him he might have managed it, he might have been able to keep the walls up for a little longer. But no. Lewis picks that moment to use his gentle voice.

He tells him none of it is his fault, when some of it plainly is. He tells him, in his own way, how much he values him as a colleague and won’t let him resign. And when they can finally leave the Hall, he tells him to give his car keys to a uniformed officer and is now driving him home.

It is in the car, five or ten minutes in when James stops being able to breathe. He knows it is an anxiety attack because he used to get them all the time. And he knows this is happening as a consequence of crash landing into scenes of past traumas so soon after Zelinsky metaphorically kicked him in the head. But this knowledge, this adult logic doesn’t help, doesn’t make the terror and sense of impending disaster any easier to deal with. Because Crevecoeur is imprinted on his soul, and what he really knows is that the Lord of the Manor is coming for him, he’s coming to take what’s his.

“Shall I try and stop somewhere?” Lewis asks mildly.

Of course Lewis sees. He is trembling, gasping for air, God knows what else. On top of all his other failings Lewis sees his weakness, his shame.

“Just a panic attack,” he stutters out fighting through his deflating lungs, through the hand reaching into his chest to crush his heart.

“All right, let’s get you home. Not far now.”

Without realising it he has doubled over, as far as the seatbelt will allow. He feels a hand on his shoulder, easing him back.

“Sit up, James, it’ll help.” He does, it doesn’t. “And breathe slowly. Come on, with me.”

Through the roads of Oxford and the stop-start of traffic they sit side by side and breathe, sighing together like two mourners at a funeral. James desperately following the rise and fall of Lewis’ chest.

The other thing Lewis does is take possession of his hand. James wants to unfasten his seatbelt because his brain is persuading him it is asphyxiating him, and Lewis stops him. He keeps James’ hand in his lap until he can spare one of his own from driving to hold it. Lewis’ hand is warm and dry, the years have etched rough textures into it and it is made of all the things it has held; evidence and babies, pints of Best and graveyard soil. It is a blazing furnace on James’ hand which can keep hold of nothing, ever.

Finally they are drawing up outside James’ house. He can breathe again by then and the shaking is under control. He is left only with this terrible, cold fear and an intense, hollowed out exhaustion. Lewis wraps an arm around him to get him inside. In the living room Lewis puts him on the sofa. He wants to relieve him of his tie and probably all the other things you take away from lunatics before you lock them up but somehow James can’t let go of him. 

When James was a teenager, going through one of his more susceptible phases, he used to equate these attacks with demonic possession, imagining similarities between his symptoms and the written descriptions in the bible and contemporary sources. He is more sceptical now but he still can’t shake the belief that Lewis is the only one who can rid him of his demons.

Lewis gives in and sits down next to him. He reaches an arm round him, resting it cautiously on his shoulder.

“There’s nothing here to worry about,” he says. “You’re completely safe.”

It is not enough and James turns so he can plant his forehead on Lewis’ shoulder. Lewis’ hand moves to the back of his head, bringing him down to some warmer, softer spot against his chest. After a moment another arm goes around him. “There, now.”

As he settles, as the impulse to fight or flight subsides he becomes aware of the pulse of Lewis’ heart, of the hand that strokes his hair.

“Sorry,” he says into Lewis’ shirt. “Dipstick.”

He is recovered to the point where he can sit up straight and make a reasonable stab at normal, so he knows it is time to detach himself from his inspector. Only he can’t, because when he tries Lewis won’t let him. His arms close around him and he is firmly held. Lewis would know that an anxiety attack isn’t a fit or a stroke, it is not dangerous just a nuisance, so if his grip on James is so fierce it is because something else has rattled him.

“That bastard got you too, didn’t he?”

Oh.

Even now he is not sure he can say. The first, the most important and inviolable rule was ‘never tell’. He learnt to recite it not long after he learnt to talk and this is the first time he has been tested. The children never confided in each other, none of the adults breathed a word and his parents already knew; they must have or why else would they have rejected him?

Lewis waits, cradles his head and waits. He can’t lie to Lewis, or rather he can but he won’t again. Not to Lewis who comforts him with the beats of his own heart.

“Yes,” he says.

Lewis reconsiders the hug, releasing him and standing suddenly, disappearing from his line of sight. ‘Bereft’ is the word that rises up. He calls for him before he can stop himself, “Sir.”

Lewis, who had begun angry pacing somewhere behind him, comes back. He drops back down on to the sofa, raises a hand which is gently cupped to fit exactly the side of James’ face, thinks better of it and lets it fall.

“You’ve had to be so strong, haven’t you, James?” Lewis says. “And you’ve always been alone.”

He wishes the machinery of his mind would click back into place. He might have a chance of understanding what has happened. For a moment back there, when he was in Lewis’ arms he didn’t feel alone at all.

Lewis gets up again, but this time he is making his way to the kitchen. There is a sound of a raging storm or more likely, he decides, the kettle.

“Can you get up?” Lewis is saying.

He realises he has fallen asleep, for the first time since before Zelinsky. Darkness is tinting the daylight outside; it must be late afternoon on this interminable day. Perhaps Lewis is trying to tell him they need to be at work arresting everyone he ever knew.

“Give me five minutes.” 

“No, I mean -, can you stand yet?”

~~~

When he wakes again he is in bed. If it wasn’t for the thumping pain in his arm he might believe he dreamed the whole Crevecoeur case, it wouldn’t be unprecedented.

He has been put to bed by Inspector Lewis. The embarrassment of this is not fully appreciated until now because he was asleep through most of the process. He has been left in his shirt and suit trousers, so really, it could have been worse.

His mind is clear now; the anxiety attack has faded away, the hour or so of sleep has helped. It dawns on him he has spoken. In a small, single-syllabled way, he has done what he should have done years ago.

He sits up and puts on the bedside light. He sees then that Lewis has dragged a chair to the side of the bed and is dozing in it.

“Sir,” he whispers, waiting for him to wake and focus. “Get into bed, you can’t sleep like that.”

“It’s all right, James. Quite comfortable.”

“You don’t have to -. I’m fine now, honestly.”

“Yes, I can see, you look, back to normal.” The ‘whatever that might be’, is left unspoken. “But I don’t want to get in your space.”

“I’m not going to have a breakdown if I wake up and find you there, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

Lewis looks dubious, as well he might. James has actually got form on this variety of extreme flashback. But for some reason he is sure Lewis provides immunity.

“You’re not scary, sir. You make me feel better. If something happens, it won’t be because you’re there; it’ll be because I’m a basket case.”

This, oddly enough, seems to satisfy him. He gets up with a ‘my flipping back’ groan and makes his way to the other side of the bed.

“I’ll give you ‘not scary’, sergeant,” he mutters, channelling some long dead senior officer to make James, finally, laugh.

James gets up for the loo and to take out his contact lenses. Then he goes to find his pain killers and smoke a cigarette while drinking a mug of cold tea he finds in the kitchen.

When he comes back Lewis is as far to the edge of the bed as it is possible to get without risking a fall and is pretending to be asleep. He changes, gets into bed and starts pretending too.

They both do sleep though, into the early morning. When James wakes he finds that Lewis has gravitated to the centre of the bed, rolled on to his front and draped an arm around him. James has fitted himself into the strip of space remaining, his head pressed against some solid bit of Lewis. This is the sort of thing that has set him off in the past but he finds himself content to be confined beneath that arm.

Lewis wakes slowly with some confused murmurings. “All right, pet,” he says, presumably to Val. When he is more awake he rolls away taking his arm with him.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he says sounding so remorseful. “It’s all you need now, isn’t it?”

James waits for Lewis to simmer down and look at him.

“Thank you, sir,” he says. “For rescuing me yesterday. And for everything you’ve always done for me.”

“No need for all that,” Lewis says. He is using his DI voice again and, all things considered, coping pretty well with waking up wrapped around his sergeant.

James hesitates and then props himself up on his good elbow so that he can plant a kiss on Lewis’ cheek. This elicits a rolling of the eyes from the older man, one of his rare, affectionate, ‘what would Morse have made of you?’ looks. And something else, something in those eyes which something in James almost recognises. 

Lewis is already getting out of bed. He has slept in his shirt and underwear and is looking around for the rest of his clothes.

“Well, sergeant,” he says. “I can’t spend all day cuddling you. I’m off home to shower and change. Why don’t you take today off and look after that arm?”

James only half hears him; he is still trying to locate the connection the two of them just made. He can’t, it’s impossible. He looks up and smiles.

“See you later, sir. I won’t be long.”

He gets another exasperated look, though he’s not sure what he’s done to earn it. Then Lewis is dressing, looking for his car keys and wandering into the bathroom for a pee. He pops back into the bedroom.

“You know you can talk to me, don’t you? I mean as a friend. About anything. If you thought it would help, I’d be glad to listen.”

James wonders where all this ‘talking about stuff’ is coming from and suspects Dr Hobson.

“Thank you, sir.” He hesitates. “I was wondering. I mean, I’ll have to make a statement, won’t I? Give evidence?”

How he will persuade himself to produce all the necessary words, he has no idea but it seems the right thing to do even when no longer punch drunk on shock and adrenaline. Lewis pauses, the idea seems not to have occurred to him. He seems to have stopped thinking like a policeman for a few hours.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he says and then, when he is already across the living room and at the door, James is almost sure he hears him say, “But I’m telling you now, I’ll not let those damned people hurt you again.”

 

End 

May 2014


End file.
